The Strange Case of Starship Iris · Jessica Best (Procyon Podcast Network)

Feed Drop! Unwell 1.01: Homecoming

October 29, 2021·21 min·1 clip

A stranger on the roadside tells Lily an old local legend about a lost girl who finds her way home by following her father's tree cuttings.

Creator Jess opens the episode with a direct address explaining that Starship Iris is on hiatus before its third season and that this is a Halloween feed drop of the first episode of another audio drama she writes for, Unwell. She describes Unwell as set in a fictional Ohio town and using gothic tropes — ghosts, the supernatural — to examine memory, community-building, family, and queer identity in the rural Midwest. She notes it is a slow-burn mystery with occasional traditional horror, that three seasons are available, and that it won the 2021 BBC Audio Drama Award for Best Podcasted Audio Drama. The narrative opens in media res with a woman named Dot injuring her ankle on a highway at night and receiving emergency assistance. The main storyline follows her daughter Lillian, called Lily, driving to Mount Absalom to help her mother recover. During her drive, Lily speaks by phone to her father Dale and his partner Cynthia, who express concern. After nearly hitting a dog on the road, Lily encounters an old man who gives her the correct turn for Mount Absalom. The old man tells her the local folk story of a little girl lost in the woods who finds her way home by following tree branches her woodcutter father had left. Lily recognizes the story, revealing she grew up in the area. Arriving at Fenwood House, Lily is greeted by Wes, a teenage part-time employee who runs ghost tours of the reportedly most haunted house in Mount Absalom. Wes presents Lily with a casserole of questionable temperature and offers her a free tour. Shortly after, Chester Warren, assistant to Mayor Lopez, arrives with an official welcoming package that includes coupons for local businesses and a free ticket to the Celery Festival, a local tradition Lily has not attended in fifteen years. Dot is discovered upstairs decorating a room for a new boarder — an astronomer — and feigns injury to test Lily's reaction time as a joke. Dot reveals she has restored Lily's childhood bedroom exactly as it was when Lily left fourteen years earlier. The episode ends with a neighbor, Russell Epstein, and others arriving outside with more casseroles to welcome Lily home. The final closing text notes that Fenwood House is recorded as the oldest continually inhabited residence in Ohio.

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